Trump Returns to Facebook Due (in part) to Florida Law? The Last Jew in Afghanistan, Major Human Rights Violations in Ethiopia, "Club Drug" Cures Alcoholism? (The Five for 05/04/21)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Before we begin:
As a follow up to one of Friday’s stories on “mask addiction” and the number of vaccinated folks defying CDC recommendations to drop outdoor masking…former NY Times columnist Bari Weiss has an excellent piece on her Substack on the same topic. The Telegraph (UK) also has a writeup this week on “COVID Anxiety Syndrome” that’s worth a read.
In this issue, I use both Vox (left win) and NY Post (right wing) as sources. Vox has a pretty checkered history of factualness, and a writer at the Post just resigned after saying she was “forced” to write a factually false story about Migrant Detention Centers passing out a children’s book authored by VP Harris. I don’t wholeheartedly endorse either of these outlets…but I’m not sure they have any more ethical issues than the NY Times or Washington Post have in the last five years. One of the reasons The Five exists is to present what’s going on in the world as a gut-check to whatever news outlets you normally consume. Or, put another way…every media outlet is lying at some point, the question is when and how often? My advice is to take everything you read with a grain of salt, and fact check when things don’t seem quite right…including what you read here.
With that being said, let’s get into the news.
[one]
It’s been just two weeks since Derek Chauvin was convicted on three criminal counts for the murder of George Floyd, but already there’s at least one piece of evidence that the trial could be granted an appeal.
Brandon Mitchell, “Juror #52” in the trial, claimed to have no in-depth knowledge of the case, as as recorded by local Fox reporter Paul Plume.
However, The Post Millennial recently uncovered a photo on Facebook of Mitchell wearing a George Floyed themed BLM shirt on 08/31/20 (pictured above), months before the jury selection process. Obviously, it would be odd to wear a t-shirt of a topic you know nothing about…
Since the trial, Mitchell has been the first juror to do a “media tour,” speaking with multiple outlets about his experiences.
Chauvin is currently awaiting sentencing, with the prosecution pushing for extra time behind bars, arguing in court documents filed on Friday “that Floyd was particularly vulnerable and that Chauvin abused his authority as a police officer.”
NBC News reports:
Even though he was found guilty of three counts, under Minnesota statutes he’ll only be sentenced on the most serious one — second-degree murder. While that count carries a maximum sentence of 40 years, experts say he won’t get that much.
Prosecutors did not specify how much time they would seek for Chauvin.
Under Minnesota sentencing guidelines, the presumptive sentence for second-degree unintentional murder for someone with no criminal record like Chauvin would be 12 1/2 years. Judges can sentence someone to as little as 10 years and eight months or as much as 15 years and still be within the advisory guideline range. To go above that, Judge Peter Cahill would have to find that there were “aggravating factors," and even if those are found, legal experts have said Chauvin would likely not face more than 30 years.
[two]
Photo: Many Tigray are marked by forehead, face or neck tattoos of Orthodox Christian symbols.
From the looks of things, Ethiopia is openly persecuting the Tigrayan population, an ancient tribe of mostly Christian farmers (although there are some practicing Jews and Muslims) in the country’s northern region. The ancient Greeks recorded trading with the Tigrayans in 800 A.D., and the tribe has lived as an ancient and free people for thousands of years. Now, the Ethiopian government is persecuting (and possibly executing) Tigrayans.
The Associated Press reports:
Ethiopia has swept up thousands of ethnic Tigrayans into detention centers across the country on accusations that they are traitors, often holding them for months and without charges, the AP has found.
The detentions, mainly but not exclusively of military personnel, are an apparent attempt to purge state institutions of the Tigrayans who once dominated them, as the government enters its sixth month of fighting in the Tigray region. Detainees, families and visitors spoke of hundreds or even more than 1,000 people in at least nine individual locations, including military bases and an agricultural college.
The government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed acknowledges that it has locked up a small number of high-level military officials from the Tigrayan minority. But the AP is reporting for the first time that the detentions are far more sweeping in scope and more arbitrary, extending even to priests and office workers, sometimes with ethnic profiling as the sole reason.
A military detainee told the AP he is being held with more than 400 other Tigrayans, and lawyers are not allowed to contact them. Even families can’t visit. The AP is not using his name for his safety but has seen his military ID.
“They can do what they want,” he said on a smuggled phone. “They might kill us….We are in their hands, and we have no choice but to pray.”
The motivation is muddy, and you’ll need to read up on several decades of local politics, along with a war with neighboring Eretria. Which you absolutely should do.
I don’t normally use Vox as a source, but this is an excellent catch-up on the situation in a single article.
After mass violence and/or genocide has taken place, questions are often asked worldwide as to “how this could happen.”
The answers are fairly straightforward:
There is almost always some indication that genocide is happening (reaching all the way back to the Armenian genocide in WWI, the Holocaust in WWII, Pol Pot’s killing fields and the more recent events in the Balkans and Rwanda in the 1990’s, there’s usually some reporting on what’s happening, although the scale of the violence isn’t normally uncovered until later).
The United Nations is a bureaucracy with a REALLY bad record at addressing the slaughter of the innocent. The fact that China, Russia, Cuba and Pakistan are all on the UN Human Rights committee can’t help much, since all those countries have an atrocious record of oppressing and murdering their own citizens…probably not the best folks to watch out for the lives of the innocent globally.
This is a situation where the incredible might of the U.S. military could convince the Ethiopian government to back down from mass ethnic incarceration (and likely, murder). But the American public is exhausted from two decades of war, and public support for even threatening Ethiopia with military action just isn’t there.
Other countries that could intervene (or, at least threaten to do so) include the U.K., France and Australia, who all have solid military forces. However, like the U.S., they’re not going to act because public support just isn’t there.
War is horrific. But war to prevent genocide is the most ethical reason to send troops overseas.
However, there’s no money to be made from preventing poor farmers in a developing nation from being slaughtered, regardless of whether or not they are an ancient tribe with a culture that’s been preserved since antiquity. (And claim to hold the Ark of the Covenant, which is highly disputed but interesting nonetheless. What’s not in dispute is that priceless books, icons and artifacts from antiquity are being destroyed in this war.)
Politicians tend to love a good military offensive.
But they don’t seem too interested when the country in question doesn’t have any wealth to be tapped into.
God help the Tigrays, because no one else seems too interested.
[three]
Changes in laws always result in unintended consequences. A stark example of this happened over the weekend in New York City, when a man who allegedly carried out a hate crime against a synagogue in The Bronx was set free without being required to post bail.
A Bronx judge on Sunday night ordered the alleged Riverdale synagogue vandal be cut loose on supervised release — reversing an earlier decision by a separate jurist to hold the suspect on $20,000 bail.
The suspect, 29-year-old Jordan Burnette, was granted supervised release by Judge Tara Collins in Bronx Criminal Court — hours after he was ordered held on bail on 42 charges stemming from his alleged 11-day crime spree, Patrice O’Shaughnessy, a spokeswoman for the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, said.
Under New York State law, a suspect hit with Burnette’s charges cannot be held on bail.
"Given the number of attacks, we probably would have asked for substantial bail before January of 2020," Assistant District Attorney Theresa Gottlieb told Judge Louis Nock earlier Sunday.
"The legislature did not include hate crimes in its revision of bail reform and, under the law as it exists today, this is not eligible," she added. "We will not violate the law."
As a footnote to this story, it’s worth comparing the (clearly broken) system in New York with that just allowed a hate crime perp to walk, with the plight of the final Jewish family living in soon-to-be-Taliban-run Afghanistan.
Photo: the last Jewish Afghan blows the last Shofar in Afghanistan.
Zebulon Simentov is the “last Jew” of Afghanistan. He has endured four imprisonments and persecution at the hands of the Taliban and occupying Soviet forces alike and has always stayed in Kabul, running the country’s lone synagogue (which has no members outside his immediate family).
However, with the Taliban set to regain control when U.S. forces exit the country in September. “I thought the Europeans and Americans would fix this country,” he told AFP, “but that didn’t happen.”
The story of an anti-Semitic hate crime perp walk is gross..but at least he has to face trial and experience the consequences of his actions (if the criminal shows up to court, that is).
That imperfect outcome is a lot better than the death sentence hanging around the neck of Simentov, who’s life would likely not extend past the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan if his family weren’t planning to flee their home country.
[four]
Former President Trump may be returning to Facebook.
Facebook's Oversight Board is ready to make a ruling on whether former President Donald Trump's suspension on the platform should remain permanent.
On Monday, the board announced it will hand down its decision Wednesday at approximately 9 a.m. ET.
In January, Facebook suspended Trump's accounts on the platform and on Facebook-owned Instagram the day after a group of his supporters stormed the Capitol.
"We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great," wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Jan. 7.
The Oversight Board's decision cannot be overruled by Zuckerberg.
No word on whether this could be motivated (in part) by a bill Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is planning to sign, which fines social media companies for permanently deplatforming politicians/residents of the Sunshine State:
Social media companies would be unable to permanently kick people off their platforms under a tough new Florida law.
The bill, passed by the GOP-dominated state Legislature Thursday and awaiting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature, would make it a crime to remove state political candidates from Twitter and Facebook, and would mete out penalties of $250,000 a day for any statewide candidate who is deplatformed.
Removing more local candidates would cost the company $25,000 a day.
The bill also requires tech companies to give users seven days notice that they are at risk of being banned and offer them the opportunity to correct the issue. Suspensions of up to 14 days would still be allowed.
Donald Trump is a Florida resident.
[five]
Doctors in Britain are experiencing early success in treating alcoholism as well as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with the “club drug” MDMA.
Developed in 1912 by the German drug company Merck, MDMA sparked great interest among doctors in the Sixties as a potential tool for enhanced psychotherapy. But it soon became associated with nightclubs and, after causing some deaths, was listed in 1977 as a Class A drug in the UK, meaning it officially has “no medical use”.
Now the drug is attracting attention again for its benefits for mental health problems. A large body of evidence now shows MDMA-assisted therapy can help people with post-traumatic stress disorder. The Bristol trial was the world’s first study using it as a treatment for addiction, says lead researcher, Dr Ben Sessa, of Imperial College London. “As an addiction psychiatrist, I was acutely aware that most cases of addiction are actually trauma-based,” he says.
By stimulating the brain’s production of serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline – chemicals associated with feeling good or happy – MDMA essentially “switches off” the brain’s amygdala (known as the “fear centre”) while keeping the other parts of the brain “switched on”, says Dr Sessa. Some patients might have spent years refusing to think about certain horrific memories, either consciously or subconsciously. The theory is that MDMA can allow them to revisit those mental images with confidence and clarity.
Sessa recruited 14 adults – including Pounds – from addiction services, all of whom drank heavily every day. A history of trauma was not a prerequisite but all of the volunteers did experience some trauma in their childhoods. Volunteers received eight weekly psychotherapy sessions with Sessa and his colleague, Dr Laurie Higbed – two of which involved MDMA.
[epilogue]
The 1980’s “Arnold vs. Alien” action horror flick “Predator” has been referred to as “the movie that spawned two governors.” Schwarzenegger famously won election in California while Jesse Ventura (right, red circle) served as the executive for Minnesota.
I recently learned via the Rewatchables Podcast (you should subscribe) that Sonny Landham (blue circle) attempted to run multiple times for Governor of Kentucky, but was never successful. This would have brought the “Governor ratio” of the main cast of a single 80’s movie to 50%.
Until the next one,
-sth